Month: August 2023

Star Trek: Voyager

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment

There’ve been a lot of episodes of Star Trek over the years. Over the course of 12 television series, there are currently 890 episodes in total. I now hold the dubious distinction of having watched all 890 of those episodes.

I watched quite a bit of Voyager when it was originally on the air, but live TV being what it is, I missed several episodes, especially in the later seasons. So I hadn’t watched every episode of Voyager until recently. With 172 episodes, it’s a lot. Many of the episodes were fun, but there were many filler episodes as well that I struggled to get through.

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Good News Friday

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment
  • Polio has nearly been eradicated. Nature.
  • 30 million more children have access to school meals than in 2020. World Food Programme (PDF link).
  • US murder rates in 2023 are down nearly 13%. Jeff-alytics.
  • The number of people without access to electricity has fallen from 1.1 billion in 2010 to 675 million today. Energy Progress Report (PDF link).
  • The Okaloosa darter, a tiny two-inch fish, is no longer an endangered species. US Fish & Wildlife Service.
  • The amount of global renewable capacity rose by 13% last year and this year it’s expected to jump by a third. IEA.
  • Stanford University scientists have invented a new kind of paint that can keep homes and other buildings cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, significantly reducing energy use, costs, and greenhouse gas emissions. Stanford News.
  • Colony collapse disorder has been managed. There are now more honey bees on the planet than there have ever been in human history. New York Times.
  • Bali rice experiment cuts greenhouse gas emissions and increases yields. Mongabay.

For more good news, check out The Progress Network, and Future Crunch.

Millard Fillmore by Kevin J. Law

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment

Millard Fillmore was born in 1800 in a log cabin to a poor tenant farmer in New York. He was named Millard after his mother’s maiden name. His father and uncle had been sold a land title sight unseen. The land turned out to be hard clay not good for farming. On top of that, the title was faulty and they lost the land. They ended up moving a few miles south where the land wasn’t much better.

Fillmore grew up doing farm chores. He had four brothers and four sisters. His father considered hunting and fishing (“sporting”) to be a waste of time. When Fillmore was 14, he was apprenticed to an ill-tempered cloth maker. He quit after 4 months, but his father found him another cloth-making apprenticeship that he stayed at for years.

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment

The novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is similar to the movie Blade Runner which was based on it, but also very different. Rick Deckard is married rather than single and surprisingly, owns an electric sheep. Since animals are nearly extinct, owning one is a status symbol. Those who can’t afford a real animal, buy electronic facsimiles. Due to the lack of animals, everyone on earth is a vegetarian through necessity and eating meat is considered atrocious.

Deckard, like most men, wears a lead codpiece to keep the radiation in the atmosphere from making him infertile. Most humans have left for the colonies, so Earth is nearly empty. Radiation has turned some people into mutants called specials. (In addition to Deckard, the other major viewpoint character is John Isidore, a special with diminished mental capacity who’s not allowed to go to the colonies.)

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Zachary Taylor by John S. D. Eisenhower

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment

Taylor was born in Virginia in 1784, not far from the home of his distant cousin James Madison. His father was an officer in the Revolutionary War and was head of one of Virginia’s prominent families. However, his family moved to Kentucky shortly after he was born.

He was a wealthy plantation owner, a gentleman farmer, businessman, slave holder, and soldier. There were apparently skirmishes with Native Americans early in his career that are largely unreported. A lot about Taylor has been lost since his personal papers were destroyed in the Civil War (his son was a major general in the Confederate Army).

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Good News Friday

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment
  • Maharashtra becomes first state in India to introduce universal healthcare policy. Hindustan Times.
  • Iraq eliminates trachoma as a public health problem. WHO.
  • Once nearing exinction, Brazil’s golden lion tamarins have rebounded from 200 monkeys in the 1970s to around 4,800 today. AP.
  • 18 countries have abolished the death penalty in the last ten years. ES Euro.
  • 16 million less children suffered from stunting in India in 2022 compared to 2012. Times of India.
  • Fatal heart disease in the United States dropped about 4% a year between 1990 and 2019. American Heart Journal.
  • Shootings in New York are down 26% this year, and the murder rate has declined by 11%. New York Times.
  • Number of Mexicans in poverty declined by 8.9 million from 2020–2022. Mexico News Daily.
  • Between 2005 to 2021, particulate emissions in Europe fell by 27%, and emissions of sulphur dioxide fell by 80%. European Environment Agency.
  • Large majority of EU countries will hit 2030 solar targets ahead of schedule. Politico.
  • India succeeds in reducing emissions rate by 33% over 14 years. Reuters.

For more good news, check out The Progress Network, and Future Crunch.

Good News Friday

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment
  • In India, over 135 million people were lifted out of multi-dimensional poverty between 2015 to 2021. NITI (PDF link).
  • Egypt used to have the highest rate of hepatitis C in the world. In 2018, the government decided to implement a campaign to screen and treat every citizen. Today, Egypt has eliminated hepatitis C from its entire population. Forbes.
  • In the last 12 months, an NGO called Evidence Action has installed over 24,000 new chlorine dispensers in Uganda and Malawi, providing 9.8 million people with access to safe water. Evidence Action.
  • Connecticut has not only cut its number of imprisoned people in half, but it has been able to close more than ten prisons while keeping its crime rate at its lowest level in more than 40 years. Slate.
  • Ant Forest, a mobile app game in China, is responsible for the planting of over 400 million trees. China Daily.
  • Maryland has repopulated more than 10 billion oysters in the Chesapeake since 1994, improving water quality, and providing a welcome habitat for other marine life. Washington Post.
  • Since 2021, eleven states have passed child tax credits that include the lowest-income families with no reported labor income, many with bipartisan support. Jain Family Institute.

For more good news, check out The Progress Network, and Future Crunch.

Good News Friday

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment
  • HIV treatment averted almost 21 million AIDS-related deaths between 1996 and 2022. UNAIDS (PDF link).
  • America’s gender pay gap has shrunk to an all-time low. CBS News.
  • Solar installations in Brazil have created around 960,000 jobs and offset 40.6 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions since 2012. Renewables Now.
  • In the first half of this year, wind and solar generated more power than coal in the United States. Canary.
  • Bhutan and Timor-Leste eliminate rubella. WHO.
  • The number of poor people in Cambodia was halved from 5.6 million to 2.8 million in the last 8 years. The Star.
  • Sierra Leone is the latest country to expand free education for children as legal right to free education grows globally. Human Rights Watch.
  • Since joining the Built for Zero program in 2015, Detroit has reduced veteran homelessness by approximately 60 percent. Reasons to be Cheerful.

For more good news, check out The Progress Network, and Future Crunch.