Month: January 2025

Book Review: ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ by Tom McGrath. 

As the 1960s came to an end and the Vietnam War withered to its foregone conclusion the ‘Hippies’, those radicalized college students who protested everything and everyone now faced a terrible reality; they had to get jobs and earn a living. Unlike their parents, who had normally lived a quiet life working for a single company and bought a home in the suburbs, they wanted something more exciting. They wanted a fast paced career where they could be a big success, and they wanted to move back into the cities where there were more and different kinds of people and just more things to do.

Cover art for ‘Triumph of the Yuppies” along with a picture of author Tom McGrath. (Credit: Philadelphia Magazine)

These ‘Baby Boomers’ would, in the decade of the 1980s create a new demographic called the ‘Young Urban Professionals’ or ‘Yuppies’. The new book by author Tom McGrath, ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ details how during the 1980s this small percentage of the American population came to completely change our country, and not for the better. Now not every baby boomer became a yuppie, for the most part yuppies were the college educated boomers who used what they’d learned to transform the US economy from one based on manufacturing to one based on service and finance. As an example of how quickly this metamorphosis took place in 1960 there were only 4,500 Master’s degrees in Business Administration (MBAs) handed out by US colleges and Universities but by 1976 there were over fifty thousand every year and that number would continue to grow throughout the 1980s.

Remember in 1960 only 4500 MBA degrees were awarded by all the colleges in the US. How much damage has been caused by the enormous growth of professionals whose only training is in getting every penny of profit that they can! (Credit: eLerners.com)

In ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ author McGrath follows the lives of many of the participants in that transformation, people like Peter Ueberroth who organized the 1984 LA Olympics, Bruce Springsteen whose song ‘Born in the USA’ became an anthem for a generation or Marissa Piesman whose ‘the Yuppie Cookbook’ helped popularize the name. These are only a few of the dozens of people who are mentioned because of their influence on the decade.

The 1980s also saw tremendous growth in the Celebrity Industry, allowing ordinary people to follow the wonderful lives of people better than they were! (Credit: ebay)

Three individuals stand out however as examples of their time. Jerry Rubin the 60s radical who in the late 70s decided he wanted to be rich along with Michael Milken, the investment wizard who turned risky and low valued ‘Junk Bonds’ into a multi-billion dollar business. The third was Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric (GE) who kept his stockholders happy by squeezing every penny he could out of two of the most famous companies in the US, and in the process destroyed one and while leaving the other a shell of its former self.

Once the most radical of Hippies starting in the late 70s Jerry Rubin became a high priest of the new religion ‘Money’! (Credit: The History Channel)

It was these individuals, along with thousands of others who actually accomplished the ‘Reagan Revolution’ a revolution whose real architect was the economist Milton Friedman. With the relaxation of regulations on banking and other financial industries the brand new MBAs began a series of ‘Leveraged Buy Outs’ and ‘Hostile Take Overs’ all of which made money for those in on the deal.

Michael Milken, on the other hand, was always devoted to the god Mammon! (Credit: Investopedia)

Meanwhile, those who weren’t MBAs or Yuppies of one variety or another saw jobs being sent overseas to counties with lower wage workers. McGrath even quotes Walter Mondale’s acceptance speech in the 1984 Democratic Convention “To those companies that send our jobs overseas, my message is: We need those jobs here at home.” So all the while that the dealmakers were lining their pockets the gap between rich and poor continued to grow.

In 1984 Walter Mondale (r) got clobbered by Ronald Reagan (l). But everything that Mondale warned us about has pretty much come true. We haven’t done much better ever since! (Credit: YouTube)

In their rush to make money as quickly as possible to keep shareholders happy the management at American companies cut back on long term investments in order to turn short term profits. One case in point is particularly tragic, RCA the leading US electronics manufacturer made the deliberate decision not to invest $200 million dollars in the technology and assembly lines necessary to build the new Video Cassette Recorders that everybody wanted. Instead RCA spent $1.2 billion buying a small financial bank so that management could show an immediate profit. That’s why today Sony and Sanyo and Panasonic own the household electronics industry while RCA no longer exists.

The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was once a leader in technology and industry. today it no longer exists. It is a victim of the ‘profit today instead of investing in tomorrow’ strategy. (Credit: Reason Magazine)

In ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ author McGrath tells a hundred such stories, he relates the details of deals and mergers that, in hindsight, have led to many of the problems our country faces today. At the same time McGrath also reminds us of the culture of the 80s, the decade of excess. The fictional TV shows ‘Dallas’ and ‘Dynasty’ are mentioned along with the early reality shows like ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’. Other aspects of yuppie life are mentioned as well such as the exercise craze that Jane Fonda made a bundle on and gourmet food. In all ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ does a great job of bringing the 80s back to life.

The 80s were a time of excess in all things, even exercise. Jane Fonda went from opposing Vietnam to helping everyone stay trim and fit, and made a bundle doing so! (Credit: Amazon)

And that’s the problem with ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ it’s all tales with no context, no analysis. McGrath never manages to describe how the counter-culture of the 60s grew into the excesses of the 80s, and he never discusses what do we do now to try to fix our economy, our political system, our country. So while ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ does detail where our country went wrong there are no solutions, no mention of a way forward.

Income inequality is a growing problem in our country today. Can we solve it, and can we solve our environmental problems without solving it? (Credit: Othering and Belonging Institute)

Nevertheless, I do give ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ a thump’s up because it is really entertaining. Time and time again you will find yourself smiling at the antics of the selfish, looking out for number one bastards who truly believed that ‘Greed is Good!’

Are Nuclear Chemists on the verge of Manufacturing a new Element for the first time in 23 years? 

We all remember the Periodic Table of the Elements from our High School Science classes. You’ll remember that one of the things we were taught was that Uranium, element number 92, was the heaviest element that occurred naturally, all of the higher number elements had been manufactured in a labouratory using an ‘Atom Smasher’ or similar technology. The atomic number you’ll recall is simply the number of positively charged protons in the nucleus of any atom.

Of course, you all remember the Periodic Table of the Elements. You may not believe it but this table really does pack a huge amount of information about the chemical elements in a convenient form! (Credit: PubChem)

The first artificial element was manufactured in 1940 and was actually number 94 Plutonium, which was created by forcing alpha particles into a nucleus of Uranium. You may remember that alpha particles are actually the nucleus of Helium, element number 2, so adding element 2 to element 92 gets you element 94. In the years shortly after World War 2 many new elements were created by physicists. Starting in the 1960s however the pace began to slow as it became more and more difficult to produce heavier elements.

Ernest Lawrence (r) with M.S. Livingston next to the first ‘Atom Smasher’ at the University of California at Berkeley. Particle accelerators like this have been instrumental in the creation of all of the artificial elements beyond Uranium. (Credit: American Physical Society)

The reason for why making heavier elements became more difficult is actually the same as the reason why there are no naturally occurring elements beyond Uranium, radioactivity. In fact every element beyond Bismuth, element 83 is radioactive and will eventually decay into some lighter element. What’s actually going on is that the positively charged protons repel each other, in electricity it’s opposites charges that attract while similar charges repel after all. When you get more than about 80 protons in a nucleus even the nuclear glue, the so-called ‘Strong Force’ has trouble keeping the nucleus together.

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When the nucleus of an atom becomes ‘too big’ meaning that it has too many protons the electric repulsive force trying to push the nucleus apart becomes stronger than the nuclear force keeping it together. The atom will eventually decay by either emitting an alpha particle (upper right) or a beta particle (upper left) or a gamma ray (lower left). (Credit: HyperPhysics Concepts)

Take Uranium with 92 protons for example, it has what’s called a half-life of about 4.5 billion years. What that means is, if you had 100 atoms of Uranium and waited 4.5 billion years half of those atoms would have decayed into some lighter element, only 50 would be left as Uranium. It’s a curious fact that since our Earth is also about 4.5 billion years old that means that today our planet only has half of the Uranium it originally had.

Uranium ore (l) and purified Uranium (r). (Credit: Britanica and Smithsonian Magazine)

 Many other elements have shorter half-lives than Uranium, Radium for example has a half life of only 1620 years making it very radioactive and therefore very dangerous. Plutonium, the first artificial element has a half life of about 80 million years, which still makes it kinda dangerous.

When first discovered Radium was thought to be a miracle element. The fact that it glowed continuously all be itself should have told someone that any chemical that energetic was dangerous, but it wasn’t until many people got radiation poisoning that scientists realized how deadly it was. (Credit: Scientific Scarsdalian)

Anyway, the elements beyond Plutonium have very short half-lives, hours, minutes, even seconds and by the time you get to the heaviest element so far, Oganesson at number 118 it has a half life of only milliseconds. Indeed, Oganesson’s half life is so short that it was probably created a couple of years before its existence could be verified. The atoms just didn’t last long enough for the chemical checks to be completed that would make certain that it had been created.

The heaviest element manufactured so far is Oganesson, number 118. Notice how the element’s appearance is predicted. Not enough of Oganesson has been made so far for anyone to be able to see it! (Credit: Science Notes and Projects)

The rules of Quantum Mechanics are strange and arcane however and the theoretical physicists who try to understand the nucleus have for several decades now been predicting that an ‘island of stability’ should exist from about element 120 to 126. Elements in this span are calculated to last for minutes if not hours or perhaps even longer, if only we could get there.

According to the complex mathematics of Quantum Mechanics the Protons and Neutrons in the nucleus arrange themselves in shells. A shell that is filled is more stable than an unfilled shell making some nuclei longer lasting than others. It is predicted that elements 120-126 will be more stable so nuclear chemists are trying to produce those elements. (Credit: Open MedScience)

Now experimentalists at Lawrence Berkeley National Labouratory may have found the right technique. What they have succeeded in doing is to develop a beam of titanium nuclei, atoms of element 22 that have been completely stripped of their electrons. Using them to bombard atoms of Plutonium, element 94 the scientists have succeeded in producing the superheavy element Livermorium, number 116. The key factor here is that a pure beam of titanium nuclei something never before achieved with an element so high on the periodic table.

A step by step outline of the experiment performed at Lawrence Berkeley that used titanium nuclei to produce Livermorium, element 116. Titanium is the heaviest nuclei to be used as a projectile in an ‘Atom Smasher’ so this experiment is a big step forward. (Credit: Gizmodo)

What the researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Labouratory plan to do now is to replace the Plutonium target with the element Californium, number 98 in order to produce element 120 and thereby reach the shore of that elusive island of stability. They expect that effort to take several years, Californium is both hard to get and hard to work with, but these scientists are the best in the world at handling superheavy elements.

The team at Lawrence Berkeley working to produce the heaviest element ever standing in front of some of their equipment. (Credit:

Everything in our world, including our own bodies is made of such atoms and nuclei, by creating these new elements physicists learn more about both the particles making up the nucleus and the forces that keep it together, or force it apart.

Two Stories from Nature that Illustrate just how similar the Behavior of Animals is to our Own. 

There was a time when it all seemed so simple, the behavior of we humans was based on reason and moral judgment while that of the animals was purely based on instinct, a rather egotistic point of view to be sure. In fact, ever since we humans began to actually look at the way animals do behave, we’ve been surprised at how often animal behavior resembles our own.

Like ourselves Chimpanzees are now known to use a variety of tools for different jobs. (Credit: AnimalWise)

Many animals use tools! Many communicate with each other using a variety of methods! Teamwork among animals is more extensive and complex than we ever imagined! Animals also engage in bad behavior, like stealing from each other, committing murder, even going to war! In many ways the behavior of animals differs in degree, not in kind from human behavior.

And again like ourselves Chimpanzees are now known to make war one group against another! (Credit: Shutterstock)

Take intoxication for example, surely the drinking of alcoholic beverages is an activity that didn’t exist until we humans began fermenting grapes or grains or, let’s face it we’ll ferment any food with enough sugar in it. Well actually no, fermentation is a very natural process, a process that just happens to overripe fruits and grains as the yeast on their skins begins to convert sugar to alcohol.

The classical Greeks and Romans so loved wine that they created the god Bacchus to honour it. (Credit: Crystalinks)

And there have been numerous observations by naturalists of fruit eating animals in the wild eating overripe fruit and then acting inebriated. In fact many overripe fruits can have an alcohol content of 1-2% by volume and some, like the palm fruit in Panama, have been found to have an alcohol content as high as 10%. Also most fruit eating animals, like monkeys and bats are rather small so it takes less alcohol to get a spider monkey drunk than an adult human.

The Palm fruit of Central and South America is well known for undergoing the process of fermentation when it becomes over ripe, a naturally occurring form of alcohol. (Credit: Specialty Produce)

Still most naturalists assumed that drunkenness in animals was just an accident, not an actual behavior. That assumption is now being challenged by a new paper in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.  While the paper accepts that drunkenness has its downside, it is certainly more difficult to avoid a predator’s attack if you are inebriated than if you are sober, there are still a lot of benefits to consuming alcoholic fruit.

Central American spider monkeys have now been observed to actually seek out over ripe fruit in order to get drunk! (Credit: Daily Mail)

For one thing it is packed with calories, the thing all living creatures need most, and the strong smell of alcohol may serve to lead the animals to the fruit. Alcohol can also have medicinal benefits, it kills many viruses and bacteria, that’s why we use alcohol wipes to disinfect. Finally the paper speculates that, as with we humans, the more social of fruit eating animals may actually use over ripe fruit, and its alcohol as a relaxant, an aid in socializing.

We humans use alcohol as a disinfectant, could some animals be doing the same thing? That would imply a considerable amount of intelligence on their part! (Credit: www.lazada.com.ph)

The paper concludes by stating that more research is needed before anything definite can be said. Alcohol occurs naturally in many ecosystems and if evolution has taught us anything it is that living creatures will find some way to make use of any resource.

Naturally occurring yeast on grapes just starts the process of fermentation. It doesn’t need any human effort to make alcohol. (Credit: Enobytes)

Another way that we humans thought that we were unique was in our ability to organize and coordinate really large scale hunting efforts. O’k there are wolf packs and lion prides but organizing really big kills, like the cattle drives of the old wild west or even just the harvesting of tuna or some other schooling fish, well that takes human ingenuity and cooperation.

Native American were known to drive large herds of Buffalo over cliffs as one method of hunting them. Surely only we humans are capable of such planning and organization. (Credit: Buffalo Bill Center of the West)

Or maybe not, in a recently observed episode off the coast of Norway researchers using the latest acoustic surveying techniques watched in awe as the largest predation event ever recorded took place. It began as a huge swarm of capelin; an anchovy sized fish that lives in cold artic waters, migrated southward to the Norwegian coast in order to lay their eggs. The oceanographers who witnessed the event estimated from the size of the swarm and its density that there were more than 20 million fish gathered in a school spread over tens of kilometers in area, that number is still only a small fraction of all the capelin in the Artic. Heading south the capelin ran straight into a large school of their most dangerous predator, cod.

During their mating season millions of Capelin, a small fish related to the anchovy, swim to the coast of Norway in order to breed. Such a huge amount of food naturally attracts many different types of predators. (Credit: Interesting Engineering)

Over the course of just a few hours of continuous feeding the cod consumed more than half of the capelin, over 10 million individual fish, making this the largest predation incident ever studied. It’s worth remembering however, that this slaughter was only completely observed because of the new technology and the resources necessary to cover the entire occurrence, so it probably won’t be long before even bigger battles are observed.

While the Capelin are eaten by cod the cod are then eaten by larger fish, or we humans! That’s the food chain. (Credit: Yale E360)
Some of data collected by the naturalists who observed the immense predation event. You can almost see the cod attacked and devouring their prey. (Credit: MIT News)

Just a few more of the ways that other the behavior of other creatures resembles actions that we thought were unique of our species.

Space News for January 2025. 

My last few posts about the latest news on the human exploration of space was all about the technical problems associated with Boeing’s Starliner capsule and the effects those issues had on the Space X Crew 9 mission as well as the International Space Station (ISS) in general. So, in this post I intend to ignore both the ISS and all missions to Low Earth Orbit (LOE). Instead, I’ll be talking about NASA’s plans for going back to the Moon and, unfortunately politics.

Putting American boots back on the Moon is the goal of NASA’s Artemis Program! (Credit: Max Polyakov)

As I’ve discussed in several of my past posts, see 3 December 2022 and 24 February 2024, NASA’s plan for returning astronauts to the Moon is called the Artemis Program and resembles the old Apollo Program in several ways. Like the old giant Saturn V rocket NASA will use the large Space Launch System (SLS) to launch the Artemis astronauts into space aboard a capsule called Orion that is similar to the old Apollo Command Module. The Orion capsule is also attached to a Service Module, again like Apollo. The actual landing on the Moon will be accomplished using a Landing Module, again like Apollo.

Space X is one of two companies that have been contracted to design and build the actual landing module for the Artemis program. They plan on using a modified version of their Starship lunch vehicle. (Credit: Spacenews)

The biggest difference between Artemis and Apollo is that for Artemis the Lander Module will not travel to the Moon with the Orion capsule and its Service Module but rather will go to the Moon by itself. NASA also hopes at some point to place a small space station into Lunar orbit from which the Astronauts will descend to the Lunar surface.

NASA’s plan for a space station in orbit around the Moon has been designated as the ‘Lunar Gateway’. (Credit: NASA)

NASA has already carried out one unmanned test mission of the SLS and Orion capsule back in December of 2022, a flight that was called the Artemis 1 mission, which was the first time that a man capable spacecraft had orbited the Moon since 1972. As the Orion capsule was returning to Earth however its heat shield underwent unexpected charring during re-entry and despite two years of testing NASA still does not fully understand the problem.

Launch of the Artemis 1 unmanned test of the hardware that will take humans back to the Moon. At first the mission seemed to be a complete success, but later examination of the returned command module shows signs of heat damage that concerned the engineers at NASA. (Credit: Wired)

Because of that issue NASA has decided to once again delay the Artemis 2 mission, which will take human beings back to Lunar orbit for the first time since the days of Apollo. That mission was scheduled to launch in September of 2025 but according to a press release from the space agency the Artemis 2 mission will now take place no earlier than April of 2026. That delay will in turn further push back the Artemis 3 mission that is intended to finally return astronauts to the Moon’s surface until mid 2027 at the earliest.

To a certain degree the Artemis 2 mission will be a repeat of the Apollo 8 mission that orbited but did not land on the Moon. Nevertheless it will represent the first time that astronauts have gone back to the Moon in over 50 years. (Credit: Wikipedia)

There is one small plus to the delays in the Artemis 2 and 3 launch dates and that is it will give more time to Space X and Blue Origin to develop and test their Lunar landing modules. Both companies are contracted to build the vehicles that will take astronauts from Lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface and both are deep in the development stages for their respective landers.

Blue Origin is the other company contracted to build a lunar lander. This is their design. (Credit: Spacenews)

In fact NASA has just released contracts to both companies to develop unmanned cargo version of their landers. The development of cargo versions of the landers will allow NASA to place equipment on the Lunar surface before the astronauts arrive and to resupply the astronauts while there are on the Moon’s surface. One of the pieces of equipment that NASA is anxious to have on the Moon is a new pressurized rover vehicle being developed by the Japanese space agency JAXA and which is scheduled to be ready for the Artemis 7 mission in 2032. The long term establishment of a permanent base on the Moon will certainly require such cargo landers to deliver equipment and supplies.

Artist’s concept of what a lunar base could look like in about 20-30 years. (Credit: YouTube)

Obviously making such long term plans and seeing them through to the end requires steady and constant funding and that requires a stable political situation. It’s with more than a bit of trepidation therefore that I tell you that President elect Trump has nominated Jared Isaacman to be the new Administrator of NASA, replacing the current NASA chief Bill Nelson.

With the incoming Trump administration NASA will have a new administrator replacing Bill Nelson (r) with Jared Isaacman (l). (Credit: NASA)

On the surface Isaacman seems like a good choice, the billionaire founder of Shift4 payments corporation has actually been into space twice, each time funding private space missions through Space X, which just happens to be owned by Isaacman’s good friend Elon Musk. See my posts of 17 March 2021 and 2 October 2021. Isaacman is an avid supporter of space exploration who is firmly committed to America’s having a leading place in that endeavour. It is quite possible that Isaacman may succeed in doing what’s necessary to get the Artemis program back on track and return America to the Moon.

In Jared Isaacman NASA will, for the first time have an administrator who has actually been in space! (Credit: NDTV)

It’s also quite possible that Isaacman and his buddy Musk will look at all of the delays and cost overruns in the Artemis program and decide to just cancel it all? Will he and Musk convince Trump to just let Space X take over the whole task of space exploration? Maybe skipping the Moon entirely to go to Mars, which is what Musk has always wanted!

Elon Musk has always wanted to go to Mars, not back to the Moon. Could he and his buddy Isaacman cancel the Artemis program entirely and set NASA on a new course? (Credit: Medium)

NASA has been jerked around like this countless times since Apollo. Reagan wanted to build a Space Station, but then George H.W. Bush decided to go to Mars. Clinton went back to Reagan’s plans and actually got a station built but then George W. Bush wanted to go back to the Moon again and it’s taken us 20 years to get at least some of the equipment ready.

In his State of the Union Address in 1984 Ronald Reagan directed NASA to build a space station within 10 years. It took a bit longer and we had to get the Russians to help! (Credit: NASA)

So, will all of the time and billions already spent on Artemis simply be tossed aside for some new vision of these two tech billionaires? And if the Trump administration does give NASA an entirely different goal, a goal that will certainly take years to complete, what if the next administration changes it once again? And all the while China, which doesn’t have to worry about new administrations changing course every four years, just keeps plugging away with its goal of landing Chinese taikonauts on the Moon by 2030!