Having been perplexed by a number of stories in the news the past few weeks, I finally came across an item that has shed a little light on my lack of understanding of current events. The only question that remains is: “On which side of the divide am I?”
With the mid-term election over, a sudden quiet has fallen over the rugged landscape of American news, I imagine much like the silence over the battlefields in World War I once the Armistice took effect, or the field at Gettysburg after Pickett’s Charge. A silence, broken only by a few pitiful moans, quickly stilled. The votes are cast, the plans are revealed, and the future is before us.
But how did we get here?
Seeking escape from the après-election post mortems, I decided to devote myself exclusively to foreign news. No change in the situation with ISIS in the middle-east, so I decided to explore the latest news regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is drawing strong criticism in the Chinese official press for slipping a coat over the shoulders of the Chinese President’s wife during a state dinner in a chilly room this week.
Not for sending more and more troops and tanks into Ukraine, or for having his flying monkeys test NATO air defenses from Sweden to Spain more than 300 times this year. Nope, just for acting like a gentleman in cold coal-fired Beijing.
And in their spare time, those same Chinese have just launched a nuclear-powered submarine about the size of a small aircraft carrier, which features twelve full-size missile launch tubes on its afterdeck. What they plan to do with this floating Deathstarfish is anybody’s guess, but, after all, there are only so many things you can do with an attack submarine.
And the European Space Agency managed to hit a comet millions of miles away with a small scientific spacecraft, which promptly fell on its side during the landing attempt and is now waving one of its metal feet in the air in a stinkbug-like effort to right itself and start its mission before the batteries go dead.
Puzzling events, all.
But then, a glimmer of hope from across the pond. In the Internet® version of the Daily Mail, a popular London newspaper, a small item caught my eye. Very little of this story has seen the light of day here in the U.S.A., but the Brits are all over it.
According to the Daily Mail article, scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and at the University of Nebraska are studying a new virus that has the singular power to make its human host significantly less intelligent. Like Sir Richard Burton discovering the source of the Nile in the 19th Century, these modern scientists have discovered what may be the nexus of human foolishness: The Stupid Bug.
The virus is called ATCV-1, which is a “chlorovirus” that has only been found in green algae growing in freshwater lakes. No shortage of those in the Upper Midwest, especially here in Minnesota, with that 10,000 lakes thing.
A Johns Hopkins virologist was quoted in the International Business Times as saying that the genes inherited from parents can be affected by various microorganisms we encounter. The ATCV-1 virus has already been shown to cause a 10 per cent decrease in cognitive function in mice infected under laboratory conditions, according to a Newsweek article. Human study participants who were found to have the virus exhibited a similar drop in cognition, as well as losses in visual processing, memory and visual motor speed.
The IBT article said that the virus was discovered by accident when a group of scientists working on a study of microbes found ATCV-1 in throat swabs drawn from 44 per cent of the 92 healthy adults taking part in the study.
Having spent many happy hours boating and swimming in myriad freshwater lakes in the Great White North as a youth, I’m not at all sure I want to be tested for this particular virus. It has taken me a lifetime (almost) to nurture and develop my own unique set of likes, dislikes, prejudices and opinions, and I am not keen to learn that I may have been blown off course by a stealthy microbe.
Are you?
