Oct 3, 2018
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Happy Birthday Rene Dubos!
Another of the few people with the distinction of passing away on their birthday.
Dr Dubos got his PhD from Rutgers university in 1927 and discovered the antibiotics tyrothricin and gramicidin produced by Bacillus brevis.
Way back in 1942, before antibiotics were in widespread use, Dr Dubos warned that we should anticipate the development of antibiotic resistance.
Dr Dubos’ interests extended well beyond the lab bench. He was a proponent of the interaction between humans and the environment, and is credited with coining the phrase “Think globally, act locally”. His book, So Human an Animal, won a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, its major thesis was that technology is dehumanizing us and that science needs to be humanized.
Image from : http://agora.qc.ca/web/image/i1789/large/b07491.jpg
Think globally, act locally. That's true, but we have to pay attention to our capabilities. We don't need to force ourselves.
Blizzard needs to buy out Activision and fire every executive that came from there.
“I think it’s a dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s problems.” -Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, speaking at Long Now in January 02019.
Filmed on Monday January 14, 02019
Astrophysicist Martin Rees is Astronomer Royal, and has been Master of Trinity College, Director of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University and a former President of the Royal Society. His books include Our Cosmic Habitat, Just Six Numbers and On the Future Prospects for Humanity.
To think usefully about humanity’s future, you have to bear everything in mind simultaneously. Nobody has managed that better than Martin Rees in his succinct summing-up book: ON THE FUTURE: Prospects for Humanity.
As the recent President of the Royal Society (and longtime Royal Astronomer), Rees is current with all the relevant science and technology. At 76, he has seen a lot of theories about the future come and go. He has expert comfort in thinking at cosmic scale and teaching the excitement of that perspective. He has explored the darkest scenarios in a previous book, OUR FINAL HOUR: A Scientist’s Warning (2004), which examined potential extreme threats from nuclear weapons, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, climate change, and terrorism. Civilization’s greatest danger comes from civilization itself, which now operates at planetary scale. Consequently, he says, to head off the hazards and realize humanity’s potentially fabulous prospects, "We need to think globally, we need to think rationally, we need to think long-term.”
And we can.
More competitive electric markets, a Green New Deal, carbon farming and other ideas that could help slow global warming.
A most excellent guide from the Washington Post to climate change policies that we can and should fight for in 2019. Pick an issue, find local allies, and get involved!
Think globally, vote locally