It seems that the digital age started long before digitalization. Only the receivers are being invented now. One of the characteristics of this digital age is that you can’t do anything without its being recorded. For example, even if you use a pinger to mask your IP address, if investigators can access the masking company’s records, they can find out who made a call or sent an SMS when. So you can’t really do something and get away with it.
Indeed, you don’t need modern detectors to tell you there’s air pollution. However, those sensors will enable you to quantify the level of pollution. But the past is very often preserved. For example, the rings of a tree’s bark can tell you a lot about the year that ring was created. Similarly, if ice has been lying around for long enough, it could tell a lot. But finding ice that has been around for a long time is a bit of a problem. You see, ice melts in the summer more often than not, only to be redeposited in winter.
But in the Arctic, there you have really ancient ice. The same process occurs there, with ice deposited every year on top of the ice from the year before. That means that several feet down, you get some really ancient ice. The air trapped in the ice below is of the era in which the snow fell. One effect has been that if you get an ice core from Arctic ice, you can get an insight into the global climate of the time that ice was deposited. Remember, the air trapped in those ice cores could have come from anywhere before it reached the Arctic, and you are then free to make educated guesses.
Some new research shows that in Roman times, the concentration of lead went up. The reason is supposed to be because of the smelting of silver from more than included lead. That is a likely source of the lead that is supposed to have brought down the Roman Empire.
An older explanation was based on the extensive use by Romans of lead in their plumbing, specifically their drinking water pipes. Lead is bad for the development of the brain in foetuses and the newborn. So it seems that not only did expecting mothers (and neonates) drink lead, but they also breathed it in.
This has implications for us today because of the use of leaded petrol, which has thrown up vast amounts of lead into the air. The levels of lead could have led to the ancient Romans losing up to three points of IQ on average. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you take into account the variations that are behind that average, you would have gotten some pretty stupid Romans.
Actually, according to the researchers, it wasn’t that you had drooling emperors, but that Roman society as a whole lost the ability to innovate and find the kind of creative solutions to the kind of problems that were being posed. Innovation? Creativity? Those are supposed to be the things we need most if we are to make any progress in the world, which we are told will be dominated by AI and rare earths.
The USA is searching for the cause of the rise in autism it has observed. Health Secretary Kennedy has absolved Tylenol but still is in search of a cause. Autism is a spectrum thing, and while at one end Silver mining, one of the basic activities of the Roman people, was apparently responsible for their decline. So what is the factor that will lead to US decline? Maybe a President who thinks global warming is a con job, and whose motto is, “Drill, baby, drill!’ (oill, not icecores).
One of the positives Trump should be taking from global warming is that it will remove the evidence. If, as predicted, the Arctic icecap melts, there won’t be any icecores to analyze.
Not so dependent on Arctic ice has been the removal of all royal titles from Prince Andrew, not just because of his friendship with Richard Epstein, the hedge fund manager and sex offender, but because a woman published a memoir saying she had underage intercourse with Andrew.
A newspaper described him as ‘The Andrew formerly known as Prince,’ a reference to when Prince said that he was now a symbol, and was to be called ‘the artist formerly known as Prince.’ Unlike Andrew, however, the Prince was not a vice-admiral. They’re working to remove that rank.
