​Death by Wrist-Checking

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

How can anyone be lonely with eight billion homo sapiens on Earth?

The world seems to be in the throes of a PTSD pandemic. Even the price of happiness is going way up. Back in 2010 two Nobel Prize laureates studied the complexities of happiness and determined that in most cases $75,000 a year would buy some of it. But this figure applied only to day-to-day moods. The two experts said happiness “plateaus” at some figure depending upon the individual. They thought $120,000 might be where happiness tapers off, or each dollar above that makes less of a difference. Is the richest man in the world the happiest man in the world? Is Elon Musk with all his businesses and X-Twitter happier than Jeff Bezos of Amazon, the second richest man in the world with his new sexy wife, his 27-bathroom mansion, and two super yachts? Perhaps only the Shadow knows... By the way, with inflation it takes $110,000 a year now just to improve your day-to-day mood.

Many members of our extended family are working remotely and seem to enjoy the new practice promoted by COVID. But now people are saying we have an epidemic of loneliness and thousands of empty offices. The mayor of Minneapolis said recently that the downtown area has 610,000 sq. ft. of empty office space. That fact certainly must complicate the lives of many people. A Wall Street Journal article pointed out that the office is actually a social place which generally “fosters happiness at work.”

But isolation in workspace at home has created other problems, with 58% of adults saying they are lonely and 40% of those working remotely saying they go days without leaving the house. An estimate by Cigna Insurance puts the cost of loneliness-driven absenteeism at $154 billion a year. Widespread disillusionment by working remotely can hurt the business.

In less than a thousand years Homo sapiens have been in three ages: Discovery, Reason, and the current Scientific and Industrial Revolution. In this Age, people seem overwhelmed and stressed by the rapid change in the workplace and a new fear of Artificial Intelligence (AI)--which is dominant in the media. About 35% of the global workforce thinks AI will have a negative effect on them in five years or less. The various stresses of climate change-fire, earthquakes, storms, floods, mudslides, temperature, tornadoes—are emphasized and hyped by instant communications from any spot on earth, including the International Space Station. Catastrophes are all around us regardless of location.

Last week over 1,300 Muslims attending the annual Haji at Mecca among millions from every country on earth died of the heat while walking in religious events. The temperature was nearly 125F. Homo sapiens no longer sweat at that temperature. Muslims are required to attend a Haji in Mecca if they can afford the travel. This is one of the world’s largest mass gatherings. However, it seems to be getting smaller. In 2012, 3.2 million made the journey compared to 1.8 million who attended this year. It is a five-day event, so thousands suffered heat stroke and stress while walking in the heat dome.

What climate change can do to the brain

Eight years ago, a Harvard researcher took advantage of a 90-degree Boston heatwave to experiment with students who lived in air-conditioned dormitories with a group who lived in older dorms without AC. He had 44 students perform math and self-control tests five days before the temperature rose, every day during the heatwave, and two days after. The results: “During the hottest days, the students in the un-AC dorms, where nighttime temperatures averaged 79 degrees, performed significantly worse on the tests they took every morning than the students with AC, whose rooms stayed a pleasant 71 degrees.” Another researcher discovered that an average increase of four degrees—which participants described as still being comfortable—led to an average drop of 10% in performance across tests of memory, reaction time, and executive functioning. A Pennsylvania researcher discovered that high school standardized test scores fell 0.2% for every degree above 72F. Doesn’t sound like much, but what if the tests are given during a 90-degree heatwave in high school rooms without AC?

Not only does climate change affect brain performance, it also forces people to change their living conditions, particularly if they live on islands around the world. Over 1,000 residents of Gardi Sugdub Island off Panama moved to the mainland last week because the island was sinking into the sea or was being overwhelmed by the sea. The 300 families are the first forced to move, but there are 63 more islands in the same area that have constituents who will have to move in the near future. These people depend upon fishing and tourism to survive on both the Pacific and Caribbean side of Panama. Why are tropical flamingos flying to the New York Hamptons to live? The Divided States of America had an estimated 2,300 deaths by heat in 2023.

Writer Lawrence Durrell writes about our love for islands: “Islomaniacs love the mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication.” Mark Zuckerburg of Meta and Ralph Ellison of Oracle, two American billionaires with everything else, have both bought large, inhabited islands in the Hawaiian chain and treated the inhabitants like serfs and slaves. I know a little of the feeling. Years ago, three of us went fishing in Minnesota’s huge Lake of the Woods and stayed on an island near the middle of the lake in the only cottage on it With a beer or two, the lone island made it more intoxicating.

The world does not have an island for each of eight billion homo sapiens

Several years ago, two world geographers with the help of Google and government agencies counted all the islands on earth that were smaller than continents and larger than ten square kilometers. The global total came to 5,675. They estimated there were 8.8 million islands smaller than ten square kilometers and larger than one square foot, the smallest hardly big enough for a big bird to land on. So now we know we don’t have eight billion islands big enough for each Homo sapiens to live on in peace and quiet with appropriate sustenance. We do need the advice of 17th Century English poet John Donne who wrote “No Man Is An Island” when there might have been enough for each person.

“No man is an island, entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of man.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of mine were.

Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved with mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls:

It tolls for thee.

The deadly game of who is richest continues through hell and high water

An entertaining game of monopoly has been played by the superrich long before the game of Monopoly was invented to entertain families. Thousands of years ago it was the size of the pyramid and statues that won the day. At one time it was the size of the ranch. For about a century it has been the length of the superyacht and its “support” yacht. The number of mansions with dozens of bathrooms around the earth are still in play. Now we have a relatively new game the rich are playing. Society calls it “Wrist-Checking.” Even some suits and shirts are designed to artfully reveal an expensive wristwatch at the proper time. I have always bought the cheapest Timex, several at the amazing price of $9.95 because I’ve always been hard on watches.

I became acquainted with the rules and customs of Wrist -Checking in an article in The New Yorker: The Strange Journey of John Lennon’s Stolen Phillipe watch written about the trials and tribulations of a $25,000 watch given to him by his wife Ono, who also knows an expensive watch when she sees one. Only 349 of the Patek Phillippe were manufactured by the Swiss between 1952 and 1985, and it is a marvel of mechanical ingenuity, a mechanical microcomputer that records time eight different ways. The dials tell you day, month, moon phase, seconds, elapsed minutes, date, and, of course, the correct time. It also adjusts so it covers imperfections in the Gregorian calendar, including leap years. Geez! My Timex only tells the time!

The article tells the story of a watch on a murdered man, stolen, missing for 20 years, “found” by some strange people, collected by someone who loves watches and has dozens of expensive ones, which was once sold for $800,000 under unusual circumstances, and to make a long entertaining story very short, is estimated to bring about $40 million if it can be authenticated and sold at auction. It also tells you a lot of things. Many of the superrich don’t give a damn whether Arctic ice melts, that heat domes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, floods are killing thousands, and thousands are dying from the heat itself—and probably will be followed by millions. They only care to win the game of the richest man in the world, even if thousands of islands are being covered by water that came from glaciers and Greenland ice fields. Homo sapiens need to reach another level but have only one foot on the ladder.

Is a diamond a girl’s best friend if it costs only fifteen bucks to make?

It takes about a billion years to develop a natural diamond that will be placed in an average engagement ring that is currently selling for $5,500 in the Divided States of America. It may cost up to $1,000 to mine a one-caret diamond in a natural mine. The first manufactured diamond was made in a laboratory in the 1950s but it took a few years to develop a commercial-grade diamond. Up to 40% of diamonds used in engagement rings are now made in manufacturing plants for $15 to $20 each. Which diamond will express greater love?

When is it too hot to fly?

I had an early experience with this question in 1956 when I was in a Navy CT-119, a double -boomed transport, scheduled to fly from Havana, Cuba, to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic for a Marine training exercise. The air in Cuba at that time of year was so hot all flights had to take off by 10 A.M. It was close to ten when we were halfway down the runway and our pilot yelled “Can’t make it!” and stopped the take-off. I was not so surprised the other day when the National Park Service reported it would not use helicopters in medical emergencies caused by heat in all the national parks. Rescue helicopters cannot fly in areas that have light air and temperatures over 100 F. This rule will apply to most of the national parks in southern California, Nevada, and Arizona. The hot places are getting hotter. In 2021, Death Valley had a record of most consecutive days with a temperature over 125 F.